The Problem Is Enmity, Not Ethnicity

Hammon was born a slave in October 1711 and died a slave sometime around the year 1806. In February 1787, Hammon, who was a poet and the first black person in America to have their literary work published, gave a speech to the African Society of New York entitled An Address to the Negroes of the State of New York(also known as the Hammon Address). In this address, Hammon cautioned his ethnic brethren, “Now you may think you are not enemies to God and do not hate him. But if your heart has not been changed, and you have not become true Christians, you certainly are enemies to God, and have been opposed to him ever since you were born.”

Let me remind you that Jupiter Hammon was a man who literally took every breath of his existence in this world as someone else’s property. Nevertheless, he was not an uneducated or unlearned man. Hammon attended the same school as the children of his owners, Henry and Rebecca Lloyd. Hammon was a devout follower of Christ and an ardent believer that God was sovereign in all the activities of the world, including his enslavement. “We live so little time in this world”, Hammon wrote in the aforementioned address, “that it is no matter how wretched and miserable we are if it prepares us for heaven. What is forty, fifty, or sixty years, when compared to eternity?”